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For a long time, Christians have remained at the margins of social projects around development and humanitarianism in Africa. This was especially true of projects aimed at fighting HIV/AIDS, which was often associated with sin. Drawing on ethnographic explorations in South Africa between 2006 and 2014, this book tells the story of how Christian organizations, practices and narratives have become central for civil society responses to the epidemic. Marian Burchardt shows how Christians have employed globally circulating templates around 'behavioural change' in fields such as sexuality and biomedicine, but also how these templates are renegotiated and subverted when they are adapted to people's needs. Through activism and spiritual notions of life, Christians have not only affected the way people think about relationships and health; by envisioning and promoting activist notions of personhood, unwittingly Christians have also pushed the frontiers of modernity. Taking his inspirations from Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, the author argues that Christian responses to AIDS reveal the dialectics of discipline and liberation inherent in the modern Christian project.
